Category: KevinMD

How to cope during COVID-19

Lately, in the face of the coronavirus outbreak, I’ve been fielding calls from patients asking for help with anxiety, depression, and insomnia. People are worried about their health, their families, their jobs, and whether society will be able to get b…

Emergency physicians want you to have the talk about end of life care

Currently, over 60,000 people in the United States are projected to die from coronavirus.  While this is lower than earlier predictions, it is still an appallingly high number.  As two emergency medicine physicians, we have been steeling ourselves for …

It’s time for health care professionals to acknowledge our vulnerability and allow others in

It was only day one, and I was covered in blood halfway to my elbows from doing chest compressions in the operating room. The room was filled with doctors, nurses, and other OR staff. Empty bags that once contained life-saving blood, plasma, and platel…

The final words that are a precious reminder of why I went into medicine

I have cared for them both, husband and wife, now in their 80s, for almost 20 years. She is a retired nurse and him from his business. They are so typical of this “greatest generation”: tough, enduring, hard-working, deeply faithful, fervently independ…

Health care workers: What do you need?

What do you need? What do you need right now, and what will you need days, weeks, months from now? Do you need PPE or time off? Do you need hand sanitizer or disinfectant wipes? How about testing kits? Swabs? Do you need help keeping your practice aflo…

COVID-19 and the value of human life: What if the vulnerable population was flipped?

As I lay awake in the wee hours of the morning, after having yet another debate regarding COVID-19 and reopening the economy, my thoughts were rambling.   I am ready for some return of any semblance of normalcy—like most everyone in the world right now…

Strategies for lifting COVID-19 mitigation restrictions

Over the last 100 years, the U.S. has had to respond to five avian flu pandemics. The most severe was the 1918 avian influenza infecting 1/3 of the world’s population and killing 650,000 Americans. It was also the last time wide-spread containment, mit…

Combining emotion and reason in decision making

We are living in unprecedented times. Times filled with emotion and very little hard science. We are faced with the rapid spread of a new disease that has devastating consequences. The rapid spread is overwhelming our system that is designed for a stea…

Why I wear a mask in public: to protect our unsung heroes

With over 900,000 infections and 50,000 deaths in the United States from COVID-19, wearing a mask in public is now a popular thing to do.  In fact, the Centers for Disease Control is recommending that everyone wear “cloth face coverings” and many citie…

After COVID-19, can we really stomach the minutiae that comes with the next Joint Commission review?

I’ve always been fascinated with dystopian novels and zombie movies.  When the apocalypse comes, we stop sweating the small stuff.  Important tasks like sculpting our abs or finding the perfect area rug suddenly take a back seat to the new primary dire…